Ask HN: Are we second class Apple citizens now?

[cmaradcliffe]

Tim Cook recently gave an interview to Business Week (http://mobile.businessweek.com/articles/2012-12-06/tim-cooks-freshman-year-the-apple-ceo-speaks) where he sis something that I've felt for a while but now seems explicit, Mac machines are an after thought, if at all

"I mean, if you really look at it, we have four iPods. We have two main iPhones. We have two iPads, and we have a few Macs. That’s it."

It is not news that they have been forgetting their professional customers with consumer focused updates but are we going to be forgotten completely?

[daenney]

I think you're reading a bit too much in the 'a few Macs'. The iMac and MBP's are getting steady updates. Granted, the Mac Pro is a different story. It's obvious too they're trying to bring OS X and iOS closer together so you might not be seeing tremendous advance in every release but under the hood a lot is changing to move to a unified platform which will, probably, be beneficial to us all.

What is a professional customer anyway? Is that someone who doesn't buy iPhones and iPad 'cause I can tell you a lot of professionals do. Is that someone who is frustrated because of the changes made to 'professional' audio, video and image editing software they produce? Is that a customer that only buys Mac Pro's because of the Pro and now feels duped because the Pro's don't get the love they used to? Is that a developer who's very happy with his MBP because it offers an awesome GUI and a BSD/Unix subsystem allowing him to develop all his cool software? Is it the frustrated Windows SysAdmin that can't deal with all those pesky Mac users in his carefully though ought Ivory Tower Active Directory infrastructure? Or the guy who bought >9000 XServe's a decennium ago?

It might be worth defining what you see as 'professional' customers before asking a question like that which, imho, is rather vague. A discussion like this can certainly be interesting but it needs to be unambiguous if it's going to be constructive.

[JoeAltmaier]

Are desktops really diminishing? Of course cheaper portable products have sold like hotcakes. Is it a mistake to compare those numbers to desktops and conclude that they are dying?

[MCGamerRic]

The attention goes where the money is... I believe that yes, we are behind iOS devices... I just hope the complete Mac line will not slowly "die" as the Mac Pro...